


The Joyful Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding

by radishface



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-13
Updated: 2018-04-13
Packaged: 2019-04-22 09:01:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radishface/pseuds/radishface
Summary: Your life belongs to you. Somewhere along the way, you lost it. Somewhere along the way, you get it back.Taeyong takes back what’s his.





	The Joyful Pursuit of Knowledge and Understanding

 

 

#

You’re hurrying to the subway station. In one hand is a street stall gimbap. Some unthirstable hunger from in you growls for more. Construction noise from the skyscraper next door rattles your bones and plumes of dust squirt out the sides of the scaffolding after each jackhammer chorus. Distant keen of a PA announcer sending tinny warnings. The gimbap tastes like anchovies soaked in old sweat. On the subway the passengers hold on to the restraints. Their heads a jagged topography, their movements arrhythmic, their faces blank. Behind sunglasses and a face mask it’s not hard to blend in. Unspeakably numb, just like the rest of them.  
  
_I made you,_ you replay in your head.

_I made you and this is what you do to me—_

You disappear.

#  
  
  
At the beginning of Lee Taeyong’s long comet tail of a career in song and dance, there was his Word. Offset printed on 125gsm paper SM Entertainment was his contract upon which he signed his name. Signed with the Producer’s pen, given to him hilt first over a mahogany table that stretched slick and long on the top floor of a building that overlooked the winding black deep of the Han River and the bubbling concrete jungle of the city.

Taeyong was thirteen years old and his forearms were scrawny like his soul. There was something about the whole situation that made him feel like he had one, that it was bound by covenant to the industry and to the man standing before him.

There was nothing at all significant about the Producer himself. He was descended from a decent family but due to lack of focus had been educated abroad. When he returned and made his fortune in song and dance he began to maintain the glow of everlasting youth like all men in his position with the fountain of youth: botulinum toxin.

It was with this slightly plastic smile that he offered his fountain pen to Taeyong, hilt first. The pen’s logo gleamed at him. Some Japanese make. Custom. Coiled snakes and kissing birds up and down the shaft in debossed relief. Metalwork and woodwork more sophisticated than anything else Taeyong had ever seen. The nib of it blued to the iridescent flush of ripe plums, the line of ink that slid from within severe and elegant. There was some power in it. It weighed too much for a pen. It was heavy in the hand as if it were made of the same kind of dense filial obligation that made it hard to say no.

Taeyong injected his name onto 125gsm heavy paper with it. The characters looked like something alien. The ink floated on top of the paper before all at once getting sucked in. Then it was his name in there against the backdrop off the company’s watermarked logo.

#

The sun is blinding through the windows. You don’t usually do this in the broad daylight but He must be desperate.

 _Come in, boy_ He says, waving his hand closer. So you come in with your head hung low. This is one of the perks of the job.

Not yours. His.

He makes nice the way He always does. Asks after you and your family as if He doesn’t know everything already. You stand there with your hands at your back and don’t speak with inflection don’t give Him no satisfaction. He’ll take it when he’s ready anyway.

He makes you wait. He’s going through paperwork. Must be signed before the end of the day.

In this age of digital and pixels He still signs things the old way. He keeps two pens on his desk, one red and one blue. He still carries that same black fountain pen with him. Tucked into His jacket or clipped on like a microphone to the inside of His shirt. It looks old. Older than the phone he carries. Older than the cut of the suit He wears. Older than He.

It was a nice hotel room like always. Always the one at the end of the hall on the top or second top floor. Nice plush carpet you can feel under your kicks. He tells you to take off your shoes and get comfortable boy. He pours a scotch. Twenty year old Nikka from Japan. Smells like some expensive wood from a mountain range you’ll never go to. Hits your nose like gasoline. He offers you a glass. You swallow it. Makes it easier.

He’s in a talking mood tonight. Something got him nervous. It’s renewals season. Contracts getting spit back round the machine again. This the year his Chinaboy was gonna leave. After what he did you aren’t surprised that Winwin is resigning. If you can even call it that. What happened made Winwin go inside himself completely. Winwin was a dummy but he was tender underneath the ignorance. Made you hate yourself that whole month he wept at night but then you let it go. You couldn’t protect everyone. It was the only way to keep living.

Three scotches is what it takes the Producer to tell you to _come here boy_ for real. Behind the hotel desk that faces the window He sits in the leather chair and swivels to meet you. His nose sweats clear little bulbous freckles. He looks like one of your dad’s fishing buddies from way back when. Broad shoulders gone soft with middle age. Shirt stretched thin over his bloated soju belly. He unbuttons yours. It’s Givenchy. He takes off his. It’s Givenchy too. He takes off your belt. Unzips your pants. Pulls you by the flap of your briefs closer to him. Givenchy, Givenchy, Givenchy down to your bones. He moans when He takes you in his mouth. From here you see the sun spots on the bald spot of his skull like an ambivalent archipelago in a sea of muddy beige.

You tilt your head back and look out upside down at the Han River snaking black from so high above so upside down. You have no sense of its age or its power or how far in time it must have come to be here in its current state. How many millions of years it must have taken for the cruel cut of the river to carve its way into the land and how many millions of years the land must have had to dry for it to hold civilization and this hotel and you and He.

You been in the industry now six years. You wonder when you get to call it on your own.

#

 _Hyung you’re back_ they greet you.

You crack them a half smile, show them it’s normal, you weren’t gone long, you weren’t gone anywhere that mattered. He didn’t want your ass tonight so you can walk normal keep the swagger out of your step. Your throat is raw though so you go to the fridge and grab yourself a calpico and screw off the cap and throw it at the trash can. You miss and Jaehyun picks up the cap and drops it in the trash can with a neat little smile at you. You rinse your throat with cool yogurt sweetness and take in Jaehyun with his freshly-showered pink face towel around his neck and fresh white t-shirt. Looking cleaner than you’ll ever feel.

He gives you that shit-eating grin. You sneer at him and let him think it’s for the bottle cap. He bends over to pick it up. His ass is perfectly rounded in his sweats and you can smell the heat coming off him, bouncy and thick. You know what he looks like under his clothes. You want it with the kind of vengeance you know has been dealt to you all these years but you’re not going to let yourself touch it. Until your feeling gets clean you won’t let yourself touch anything.

Game of cards in the common room. Better a distraction now than ever. You join. Poker face comes easy to you anyway. You win like you always do. _Taeyong-hyung,_   _but you always win,_ the kids whine. Makes you smile. Mark looks the most put out. He had the second best hand after you but you lied through your teeth and got him to go all in. You ruffle his hair, consolation prize. He gives you a great smile that’s full of _I hate your guts_. Great smile on that kid. You honk his nose. He blows a raspberry at you. His spit flutters over your face. Hah. _I’m gonna go wash my face before I catch something_ , you tell them and you go.

Might as well make it a shower. Everybody out there is occupied anyway. You strip and step in with the water blasting hot. The bathroom becomes a steam room in no time. Feels good. Feels like everything is hot and wet now and not just the filth between your legs. You wash carefully and avoid touching yourself. Avoid thinking about anything this afternoon and instead thought about what the stylist was going to put you in for tomorrow’s live performance. You repeated the moves in your head. Danced a little in the shower, whooped your lines softly to yourself. In the hot spray of water it felt like going back to your ancestral self. Dancing at the volcanic dawn of time under a monsoon of hot ash.

Stepping out of the shower someone else is there. It’s Jaehyun and he’s brushing his teeth. He looks at you funny. You’re naked, so what, who cares. You give him a blissed out fuck you kindly like what you see smile before you realize what he’s looking at.

On your neck and on your collarbone and down your ribs to the inside of your thighs you are marked in purpling bruises. And on your ribcage He had inked His name on you in a fit of dandy glee. You sling the towel over your waist. What looks like pity and fear and confusion comes on strong in Jaehyun’s eyes as he puts two and two together. A part of you says maybe you wanted Jaehyun to see.

“You didn’t have those this morning.“ Jaehyun swallows, his gaze settling on the black ink on your ribs.

“Didn’t,” you say, nonchalant.

“Hyung, was it—?” and Jaehyun’s voice trails off as he lets you fill in the blank. With His name on your chest there is no way it could be anything else. The silence in the bathroom rings hard and Jung Jaehyun’s breath gets magnified. The look in his eyes changes to something you recognize you’ve seen before you _know._

“Fuck,” you say, exultant with realization, charged with the rush of destruction, the hidden self emerged, Lee Taeyong, avenging son of a good-for-nothing assembly line butcher, his father the head boner inserting his knife into the mouth cavity, cleaving up into the skull to remove the brains, dead of a malignant infection at forty-two. Lee Taeyong who kept his damn mouth shut feeling his teeth zing with some static tingle like his head was made of a TV tuned on no channel. “What, you like this?” You lean back against the sink and let the towel drop from your waist. Let him see.

Jaehyun’s face darkens with the weight of too much known at once, his tongue darts out to lick his lips, something beyond his control. “Taeyong,” he says. His Adam’s apple bobs.

“Come here,” you tell him. He does. Steam making the bathroom some other dimension, that’s the only way this could be happening. You take his hand and put it over the purpling bruise on your collar. His thumb strokes it and he looks at where your towel is slung around your waist. His fingers trail to where His name on you sings like a fresh brand.

Jaehyun looks into your eyes and now there’s something else there. You don’t want that. Whatever the look is now you don’t want that. You step back and his hand drops. You leave.

The steam trails behind you. Outside in the hallway it’s cold.

#

Your bruises have faded to a sullen shade of yellow and His name has faded to a purple blur when He calls for you next.

But it’s not just you.

You and Ten and Mark are called up to meet with the Producer. His office this time a twenty-fourth floor kind of affair with the corner view and furniture made with expensive polished wood. You wonder if Ten is with him too. The way Ten acts so easy around him could mean it either way. You keep mute like your love bites and watch him from the hood of your eyes.

He says you have all done very well to show the company in the best light and that there will be a five percent bonus added to your salary for the quarter. Ten bows first followed by Mark and then you.

 _Mark—I hear very good things about you,_  the Producer says, and your heart drops into your stomach and churns in the acid as you hear him in that honey-spoken voice tell Mark he’s destined for great things. Is it jealousy a part of you asks or is it that Mark’s next?You’re getting old Taeyong, a part of you says relieved. Maybe it’s someone else’s turn. But over all the treachery is a single stream of _no no no no no no no no_ even as Ten is laughing and agreeing and jumping in yes Mark is the best, Mark is talented, Mark might be even better than Taeyong.

The Producer chastises you. _Lee, don’t look like that._

Later, Mark asks you if you’re okay. You give him some excuse. You have enough brainpower to tell him you’re not mad at him or jealous of him. Just that Mark should watch out for the Producer.

 _Why_? Mark asks. Mark’s eyes are round and shining like a monkey’s. You remember when you were a naïf.

 _Cuz_ , you say, and make light of it by licking your lips lasciviously and waggling your eyebrows up and down.

 _Ew_ , Mark says. Ten is silent on the elevator ride down.

#

This was one of those times Taeyong knew what was happening and how he should feel but it was getting hard to.

He was eating with a fork and knife. Right hand holding fork left hand holding knife. Continental style. Fancy ass humblebrag New American shit on the twenty third floor somewhere. Duck confit seasoned in Thai sauces served with truffle French fries coming to him from a white glove and silver tray. Overlooking the city. Always overlooking the city. The Producer knew what he liked and stuck with it.

Fancy New American shit because He’d studied in America because He couldn’t get into a good school in Korea.

They treat you to a team dinner every once in a while now and then in a blue moon. Your knife skills are better than your English skills. Maybe you could pay more attention in school next time you go time traveling. Just kidding you can’t time travel. Just kidding you don’t care about English.

Just kidding you do.

The Producer called you over. Taeyong, what do you think, do you think Mark is ready. Half in Korean and you nod even though you don’t understand the other half. Mark Lee though listening with rapt attention to him. Ten and Johnny there too. They’re all speaking English to each other. You can’t make it out from where you stand. They’re speaking English and this place is quiet and hushed but still you’re eighteen boys and one Producer at this long black obsidian lacquered table like the longest panther you’ve had the pleasure to dine off of. He’s taken his pen, that pen, out of his shirt pocket and he’s ringing his wine glass with it. Let’s toast to our success this coming year. Everyone drinks on cue.

What the fuck does he want with Mark.

_You think Mark is ready?_

You know what he wants with Mark.  
  
_Getting old Lee Taeyong getting old getting outta here_

You excuse yourself like a gentleman to take a piss. From the other end of the table Jaehyun looks at your ass as you walk away. Jaehyun licks his lips because he can’t help your ass.

You take your goddamn time pissing. The bathroom here is better than any room you’ve lived in your whole life. Black marble urinals white bone china sinks chrome faucet and mirrors stretching all the way up to the ceiling. A view of the city below. Han River dark but for the puttering of tiny blinkering tugboats sailing sad and slow east and west back and forth. From here you feel like Godzilla.

“Hyung,” Jaehyun says by way of greeting, and takes the pissing spot next to you. He unzips his pants. You watch him take his dick out.

“What’s up,” you say, wringing your dick dry before tucking yourself back into your pants.

“What do you think of the food.”

You shrug and go wash your hand. They have towels next to the sink in white fluffy piles.

“They should just give us bonuses instead of taking us out like this, right?” Jaehyun flushes the urinal and takes the sink next to you. You guys look at each other through the mirror.

“He’s got it covered,” you say. No need to say who the He is.

Jaehyun licks his lips. “You okay? If you ever wanna talk about it, I’m here.“

You scoff. Useless. “What’s there to say.”

Jaehyun is nervous. Could he be nervous or concerned. “When did it start?”

Your fingers grip knuckle-white on the edge of the bone china sink. Might crack under pressure. “Six years,” you say and it takes you everything to say it. Makes you feel sick to say it but your throat go numb before you can go sick.

Jaehyun looks like a candle blown out and all left a steady stream of dazed smoke from the soothead. “I mean. Maybe you—do you actually like him. Is that what it is? I don’t want to get the wrong idea.”

The _wrong idea_. “It’s not about like or not like.”

“Then you shouldn’t do it,” Jaehyun says like he hasn’t heard you. He’s saying it to himself.

“Don’t talk about shit you don’t get,” you say.

“You don’t need to do it,” he repeats.

Yeah, you do. You smile. It’s that smile with a bit of the dark inside of it. You learned it from inside you the way He made you feel when He takes you. Bad nasty dirty hurt all knowing everything. Out on your face it makes fans scream. Here it makes Jaehyun weak in the knees. Here it makes Jaehyun back into the sink.

You knock his knees apart with your own and press your thigh into his crotch. Your nose on his. Your hands on his chest. “You think you’re a hero, Jung Jaehyun? You think you’re going to save me?”

“Hyung,” he breathes.

“You want to help me?”

“Hyung,” he gasps.

You step back. Taking in Jaehyun all of him. Hopelessly confused and turned on. You were like that once too. You take your finger and slice it across your neck. Jaehyun swallows and his eyes flutter shut. He looks like he never wanted to know. You laugh and leave the bathroom. Yuta‘s right. Jaehyun is pussy shit.

#

The day finally comes.

He called for Mark alone. The field producer came to pick him up. Car was waiting out in front. The Mercedes. Mark was excited. Your heart in your throat and your throat in your fist because the Mark that was going to go and the Mark that was going to come back would be different, so different.

You held your breath and ran downstairs and jumped in the car grinning brazenly.

“Lee Taeyong,” the field producer said, from the front seat. “What are you doing.” Mark looking confused as well. Black doe eyes on you.

“I’m going too. You flash His number, and old text that said _come Taeyong I need you_. You had deleted everything else incriminating. Sorry to crash the party, Markle.”

“No problem,” says Mark. “This car is big enough for the both of us.”

The ride is quiet. They pull up and you get out first. You get to the elevator first. You get to the broad two-door doors first on the twenty-third floor. Mark is behind you. He’d better stay there.

The Producer masks His surprise. Maybe His displeasure. The meeting with Mark ends up brief. Because you talk the whole time. You compliment the Producer on his necktie. On his suit. You compliment the carpet in his office. You compliment the view. The weather. The way the boats move down the river so cute so slow. Mark sitting there clueless on the white leather sofa with his hands perched on his knees. Mark sitting there clueless. Better stay there Mark.

You’re running out of ideas when the Producer calls the meeting short. “Mark, we’re going to give you a solo video next season. Stay tuned.”

“Really?” Mark’s eyes light up like sunshine in the morning. “Thank you, daepyo-nim. Thank you so much. It’s so much more than I deserve.”

The Producer waves Mark away. “Taeyong, do you have a minute?”

“Sure thing, boss,” you say with as much brazen flippancy as you can muster. “Mark, I’ll see you downstairs.”

“Actually, Mark, go back to the dorms.” The Producer says. “Taeyong and I have something to discuss. It might take a while.”

He makes you strip and flips you over the couch. “If I didn’t now you better,” He grunts into your ears, “I’d think you were jealous of the baby.”

“That’s me,” you say.

“What a good boy,” He says.

You do the good boy. Inside you’re shook up and you let it shake you because that makes it good for Him. In your body you clench Him and in your mind’s eye you watch Mark zing dangerously close to knowing everything that this world meant. No, Mark can’t know. He’s better off not like you not like this not like Winwin or Ten or any of the others.

The Producer grips your hips hard enough to bruise. You tighten your insides and listen to Him come in you. Listen to Him roll off you. Listen to him breathe.

“Good boy,” He says.

“That’s me,” you say.

#

Mark is waiting for you back at home. He says _hey hyung can I talk to you for a minute?_ all in one long strung-up sentence like he’s been practicing it.

Just a minute, you say with a smile best you can in your eyes and he shuts the door behind you two in his bedroom.

“Today,” Mark said. “I think, and I don’t mean any disrespect, but daepyo-nim asked me questions and you, well, you kept interrupting.”

“Was I?”

“You kept cutting me off. And hyung, I know you know better and I know you’re trying to protect me, but he’s not a bad guy. Actually, I had requested this meeting with him. To talk about my career at the company and in the group.”

“I see,” you say.

“And I really appreciate it, hyung, that you’re looking out for me. But I’m going to meet with him next week, okay? It’s hard enough as is to get an audience with him.”

“Next week?” You say.

“Yeah. His PA called me to set up another meeting. Said that she was sorry for the interruption in today’s plans. That daepyo-nim had some time on his calendar in a week.”

“We have too much practice next week,” you bark. “You’re going to have to cancel it.”

“Hyung,” Mark’s face is shocked, hurt. “I can’t. It’s Him.”

You rub your face. “Fuck Him.”

“What the hell, hyung.” Mark has gone full turnkey from confused to angry. “I don’t want to accuse you of anything, I don’t, but you get to be the center _all_  the time. Why are you—why are you stopping me from this?“

“I told you,” you tell him, and turn leave the room.

The water from the shower is hot but His spunk dribbling down your leg is hotter still. You slice a finger across your neck ever so lightly. You do it again and again until the water runs cold.

#

“Hey,” Jaehyun says.

You’re on your mobile trying to sleep. Feet poking out of the bedspread too short too thin. It was an off day you had. Ended up crying to yourself. Usually you kept it quiet but this time you couldn’t. Donghyuk left the room after asking you if you were okay and then if you needed your own time. He must have told some of the others but you don’t fucking care.

When you started to calm down was when Jaehyun came in. He took a seat at the end of your bed. Squeezed your ankle through the sheets. “Hey,” he said, and said some other things which were supposed to soothe you. He brought in a cup of tea. Quaint. Shy look on his face. Edged look on his face but he was here anyway. You took the tea. You weren’t ready to look at him yet.

Warm cup in your bony hands feels nice this way. You let yourself feel nice this way and wait for him to say something.

“I talked to a friend of mine who’s studying law right now.” Jaehyun says. “Not about you. But about, hypothetically, what would happen if, well, in this kind of context. Completely hypothetically. I didn’t say anyone’s name.”

What the fuck did Jaehyun say. But he’s nothing if not cautious, careful. You’re almost impressed that he had the nerve to broach such an unsavory topic with that beautiful untouched bourgeois mouth of his. “So what.”

“And my friend said to file a formal complaint with the human resources department. That once they had enough cases of this happening to build a case then—“

You start laughing and don’t stop for a while. You put the cup on the nightstand when you’re done. Half of it is spilled over you and now your shirt is wet.

“Hyung,” he says, hand on your ankle again.

“Who has that kind of time,” you say one slurred word at a time. “You think the system serves us. You think we matter. Who has time for the fucking bureaucracy that *He* built. We just take what we can get from the powers that be. We just come and go like the good boys we’re supposed to be. We dance like the monkeys we are. When do we get our freedom back. When do we get to be ourselves. Only prostitutes are closer to being just money than we are.”

“Don’t say that, hyung.” Jaehyun whispers. “Don’t think like that.”

Don’t think like what, you sneer. He’s never been called up to the twenty-third floor. He’s never been told that he could be trash in an hour if He wanted. Never been told that his life would be over if his real scandals got out. Never been told that he’s been made by the hand and the will of someone else. Jaehyun was born with no darkness in his heart that anyone could exploit. Jaehyun had made it through the valley of his most yearning years untouched by the muck of what one person could do to another. What did Jaehyun know.

“You should leave,” you say.

“I can’t,” Jaehyun says. “I want to help you.”

“Why.”

“I care about you, hyung.” He squeezes your ankle.

You sit up and take his face in your hands. You stroke his cheeks with your thumbs. You are not gentle. His eyes flutter shut.

“Why do you do that,” you say.

“Do what,” his breath catches in his throat.

“Close your eyes when I try to look at you.”

“I’m scared of what I’ll do.”

You want to tell him that’s what it’s like, that’s what it’s like when you’re used up by someone who has skill and power. Somehow the words die in your throat when you catch him looking at you like you’re the Rapture.

“What’s that,” you say.

Jaehyun swallows thickly. “I think you know.”

You let go of Jaehyun. No touching until you’re clean. Someone else like you. But no touching until you’re clean.

“He’s called for Mark.” Your voice is dull. “I have to do something.”

Jaehyun stiffens.

One time you came back from a meeting with Him. That night He had bound you gagged you made you swallow and the absence of the group had felt like desertion. Like walking into a space station. You hadn’t gotten the memo. Everyone else had evacuated. They’d forgotten you.

The toilet flushed down the hall and Mark emerged. Oh hyung, he said. You’re back.

Yeah, you said, relief flooding your body like the sight of an oasis. Hey Mark.

The others went out to dinner, Mark said.

You didn’t go?

No, I—and Mark looked around. He was a growing boy and it wasn’t in his nature these days to be affectionate like he used to be. Awkward phase and all. But somehow the sweetness was still there. You could see it in those black pools he called eyes, in the way his fingers grasped at his shirtsleeves, fiddled with the seams of his pockets. I was waiting for you, hyung. You had your meeting today, right? You get tired after. Thought we could just chill, watch a movie or something.

You were never a sweet boy. You were sullen. Your mother knew nothing about what to do with you. Your dad too. You hit some point in your life and everything made you mad. You wanted to look like everything made you mad. Inside you hurt from something big and you didn’t know what it was until the Producer found you and said that he knew what you were and why you were the way you were.

The first time with Him was trial by fire. It felt like he’d peeled you open like an tangerine and bled you out like a pig. Maybe it would have been better if you’d never been seen. Been stuck as a nothing-bound nobody for the rest of your life. Maybe it’d have been better if nobody knew this about you. Maybe you could have lived your life out in the open. In the world of song and dance to be seen was to be known and to be known was to be trapped.

Like how Jaehyun is now. The way he looks at you. Trapped in your eyes. Some numbness, some tingle, reaches your fingertips. Could this be power.

“I’m going to do something,” you say, looking at the reflection of yourself in Jaehyun’s eyes. You slice a finger across your neck, just like the other night. You laugh at the way you look. If this is what He’ll see when he doesn’t see you coming.

“Taeyong, please don’t. I know he hurt you. But think about everything you worked for. If you hurt him back—pretty sure you’ll go to prison.”

Silence, and then you laugh.

“You think this isn’t prison? What we do? What we are? You think we’re free now? You think you’re in charge of your life?”

“I know what you think of me,” Jaehyun says. His eyes are remarkably clear for someone who just surrendered himself to you. “Even though I don’t know your pain. But if you do this—and let’s assume you get away with it—you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life. Think about the story you’ll have to live every day to justify it.”

“Shoulda known,” you spit. “Pussy shit.”

Jaehyun just takes it like he’s taken everything else, with that shit-eating smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. It makes you think of everything your parents stood for. A solidly middle class life doing soul-boringly middle class things, mired in a kind of routine that is like despair. Hair black and eyes brown and no risk ever. Life lived one direction and no way but out. Something hurts and twists you to think that Jaehyun might be a conformist at his core just like that. What does he think living is. Even though he looks at you the way he does, he’ll still do his duty as a man of this country and sometimes take it up the ass because that’s just the way it is. Some part of him uses you to dabble in danger, to thrill without immersion.

Jung Jaehyun respects you for your intelligence and your creative drive and your capacity for risk. His eyes are warm and brown. He has a gentle face and smells wonderful. Beyond that he has no idea what makes your heart tick. Not a clue.

But then you blink and he’s looking at you eyes narrowed, calculating. “If you do this,” Jaehyun says slowly, “you’ll go somewhere no one can follow you.”

“Yeah? What’s it to you.”

“A lot more than you think.” Jaehyun’s lip trembles.

Something about this gets your stomach in a twist. You need to leave. You do.

  
#

  
The next few days you and Jaehyun do not speak. You watch Mark like a hawk. Mark resents you after the conversation you had. He doesn’t look you in the eye. But you try not to think about either of them. Instead, you think about what it will take to do it.

You will arrive half past nine. Two fewer layers than you normally wear. You’ll lead Him to the bed. You’ll settle Him down. You’ll drink. You’ll let Him, one more time. You’ll sleep. And right before the sliver of dawn hits the horizon you’ll have bound him there. Silk tied in broad swathes. No marks on his wrists or ankles. You’ll put the pillow over his face.

 _I made You_ , he’ll think, as the sun comes up. _I made You, You ungrateful bastard, I made You what you are._

#

T minus two days. The Producer hasn’t called you. So you text him after dress rehearsal. *need to see you,* you type, before deleting choice words so the final sentence reads:

_need you._

Jaehyun sees you texting. He looks tense and it’s not just because the sweat is dripping in his eyes. He wipes it away with the back of his hand. In the dark behind the stage he says to you he knows you’ve been thinking about it. Don’t do it, he says.

 _What’s it to you_ , you say. The next song comes on and the Dreamies are up. Mark is up. You bite your tongue.

And Jaehyun is looking at you with something, wanting something. Here he thinks he can hide. Backstage with everyone buzzing around you. Hiding in plain sight. You turn on your heel, nod your head to follow. Down the hallway and past the dressing rooms buzzing with stylists you find an empty room, a storage room that holds buckets of paint and tools and plastic tubing. You open the door and ask him with cruelty in your voice if there’s something he wants.

He still can’t tell you straight to your face. Just gapes there in the doorway like a helpless fish. Wants to jump the fishbowl into the stream but can’t.

So you take his hand and drag him in and shut the door and the darkness floods your eyes. You can feel the heat pooling off his body. It’s easy to find his face with your fingertips. Days of not speaking and this happens. Against the door you bring his waiting mouth to yours.

You kiss him gentle and sweet. You feel him trembling under your hands, your mouth. He says your name in a whisper meant for a holy place. The scent of turpentine reaches your nose, sharp, astringent, biting. You didn’t mean for this to happen but something in you snaps.

You tighten, intensify, you pull his tongue to yours just the way you were taught. You wrap a hand around the back of his head and tilt his head back. Automatic. Like a good boy.

“Taeyong,” he gasps, half-lidded muzzy eyes fixed on you, at nothing at all.

You run a hand down his jaw and his neck, that thick column of pale straining muscle, and bring his mouth to yours again, this time harder. His hands curl around your back, fumbling to hold you, not sure how to hold you. You grip his shirt and lean into him, settling his hard-on against yours. You revel in how he melts and sighs and trembles beneath you when you grind into him.

 _What are you doing to me,_  he breathes as you unzip him. You’re breathing hard too. Yes, you want this. You reach into his pants and take him in your hand. With the acrid mechanical smell in the air and Jaehyun lubed up with his own precum it makes you think a well-oiled machine. You have him like a rope stretched until there was no give left.

You milk him until he’s dry and your fist is gummy from his cum. Reckless nothings spill from his lips. Jaehyun doesn’t know what he’s saying.

You feel a mixed buzz like radio static in your head. Warm inside. You shouldn’t.

In your pocket is a pack of tissues. You wipe yourself off, throw the evidence somewhere into the dark nothing. The damp is cool in its wake. Now that you aren’t touching each other Jaehyun is just an abstraction. There is something delicate about the situation. Like swimming in a clear pool, right before you come up for air. Where you exist right at where water meets air.

“Hyung,” he says, all soft. His hand finds your wrist. “What about you?”

“What do you think this is?”

“I don’t know. I want you.”

“You only want me because—“ and you can’t finish the sentence the way you wanted to. _You only want me because He does._

You open the door, and the air floods your lungs.

#

They can seat five of you per table at this restaurant. Here you are at a table with Johnny, Ten, Jaehyun, and Doyoung. You are discussing God and his many incarnations in show business. Johnny thinks that the actor is God. Doyoung is the director’s camp. Ten thinks the editor is God, and you’d be inclined to believe him because in this day and age it’s all about the final edit—but they have it all wrong.

God is the one you don’t see, the one you don’t notice. God is the leader who moves so quietly no-one notices him. The someone whose name is never spoken. Maybe He’s not even there. Maybe He never was.

 _There’s a feeling you get driving down to Seoul at night from the north, and not only there, other places where you come through hours of darkness unrelieved by any lights except the crawling wink of some faraway farm truck. You come down a mountain and all at once the shining city lies below you, slung out as far as the eye can see. The lights trail away to the east in a brilliant cluster of white and yellow lights and then there’s the dark strip of the Han River creeping through the noise like a winding blackout. You think about the sea that must have covered this place hundreds of millions of years ago, the slow evaporation, the mud turned to stone, the city rising from nothing. Nothing calm there. It’s never finished. Nothing is finished._  
  
#

You sleep and you thrash all night, dreaming of horse breeding or hoarse breathing, whether the act of sex or bloody, cut-throat gasps in one last prayer no one knows. You wake up drenched in stinking sweat. You reach for your phone. It’s dead. On the nightstand is a fountain pen. Some Japanese make, with coiled snakes and kissing birds up and down the shaft in debossed relief like an old story passed down from withered lips to pink ear one after the other after the other.

The roots of your mind feel shriveled and punky. Out in the kitchen your hands tremble as you tear open a packet of instant coffee. You drink it black without ersatz sugar or chemical cream. The sun has just risen when Jaehyun walks out. He loops his arms around you and buries his nose in your hair. But all You want is the caffeine.

 

  


**Author's Note:**

> #TIMESUP | Me tweet long time


End file.
